


throwing roses

by verity



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/F, Friendship/Love, Future Fic, Healing, M/M, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-28
Updated: 2013-01-28
Packaged: 2017-11-27 06:59:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/659185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verity/pseuds/verity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lydia and Allison get married, Stiles and his dad celebrate a birthday, Scott has had better weeks, and Derek goes to werewolf UN.</p>
            </blockquote>





	throwing roses

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to mijra & clio for cheerleading this one. <3

Stiles is Lydia's man of honor.

"No one's giving me away," she said, asking him over Skype, "but I want someone to stand up with me. Allison's got Keisha, so I want it to be you."

"Jesus, Lydia. Holy crap." He tabbed back into the full window from David Lynch's Wikipedia page. "Me?"

Lydia shrugged, not meeting his eyes. "If you want," she said. "I could ask—oh, I don't know, Meg—"

"Of course I want to," Stiles said, leaning forward even though it just put him awkwardly closer to the camera in his laptop and not any nearer Lydia. "Just—"

Now, he's sitting with Lydia in the little side garden, letting her fuss and check over and over that she hasn't gotten dirt on the huge hem of her wide, white skirt. Jackson's daughter Claire is there, too, cheeks flushed with the excitement of her flower girl duties and hair all blonde ringlets around her chubby face. She listens avidly while Stiles tells her an elaborate and extremely false story about how he and her dad and Lydia were best friends in high school, and isn't this a special day for them all.

"You're so good with her," Lydia says, checking her lipstick in her compact for the fourth time in the past ten minutes. "We're never having children."

"Well, it's good that you and Allison agree about that," Stiles says.

Lydia and Allison are getting married in the Harry P. Leu Botanical Gardens, close to Rollins College, where Lydia is a tenure-track mathematics professor and Allison coaches women's soccer. Everything is lush Florida greenery, camellias and vines and bromeliads. Azaleas and orange trees have taken over Allison and Lydia's huge backyard garden with Lydia's helping hand; Allison has a black thumb, so she stays out of it. Stiles comes out every spring and spends a few days reading books on the big hammock out back and eating too many of the shortbread cookies Allison is always baking. This is a little later in the year than he usually visits, warmer, but the morning breeze is still cool.

"You're up, honey," Lydia's mom says, standing under the arbor that leads out to the main path.

"Yes!" Claire pumps her fists into the air. Stiles hands her the basket full of rose petals before he passes Lydia her bouquet.

"If you fuck this up, I know about eight hundred ways to kill you," Lydia mutters under her breath as she watches Stiles gather up her train. "Without Allison's help."

"That's reassuring," Stiles says back. "Come on, you look great, your dress is fine, I think Claire's going to have a meltdown if we don't give her something to do in the next two minutes."

Allison's waiting for them at the altar in a slim white gown, Keisha standing at her side in a black tux to match Stiles's. The air smells like roses. Stiles's hands are full of silk organza and the light's in his eyes and everything's beautiful, everything's alive.

—

Stiles's dad is retired. He gardens, too, although his focus is on vegetables and the blackberry patch that's always been in the corner of the backyard. Dad's a terrible cook, so once or twice a week Stiles drops by and makes enough dinner that he can pretend Dad lives off the leftovers instead of dropping by Mel's Diner every other day.

"How was the wedding?" Dad says, holding the door open.

Stiles shrugs the shoulder strap on his bag a little higher and comes in. "Great. Lydia's mom put a ton of photos up on Facebook, if you want to see them." He yawns. The flight from Orlando was long and Stiles had to change planes in Las Vegas, which always makes him less than optimistic for the future of humanity.

Dad narrows his eyes. "Did you come straight from the airport?"

"Almost," Stiles says. "It's Mom's birthday. I didn't forget."

His second trip out to the car, he grabs the two fancy cupcakes he picked up at the grocery store, yellow cake with chocolate buttercream, and the half-gallon of skim milk. Scott's still crashing at Stiles's apartment, so Stiles doesn't have to worry about the cats. They'll be fine if he stays here tonight.

In the kitchen, Dad already has out birthday candles, cups, and plates for each of them. Stiles puts one candle in each cupcake and Dad lights them, cupping his hand around the candle while he waits for the wicks to catch. They did this with Mom, the last year: it was easier than making a big cake that she wouldn't be able to finish anyway. Mom didn't want them to make a big fuss over her after she was gone, so they don't, mostly, but it's her birthday. That's something that will always be hers.

"Make a wish," Dad says, sitting down across from Stiles at the table, touching his hand.

—

Stiles is the youngest librarian at Beacon Hills Library, which means he gets to teach all the nice old ladies how to access the library's ebooks online, handle YA requests, and argue with the oldtimers about collection management and the limitations of the Dewey Decimal System. They'll never switch over to Library of Congress, it's too much hassle and they're underfunded as it is, but the loyalty to the DDC just gets under Stiles's skin. Whenever he gets too frustrated, he goes upstairs and complains to Nancy the IT wizard and she pats his shoulder. It helps. Somewhat.

After work, he meets up with Scott at the cafe around the corner to give back the phone charger he left at Stiles's place the other night. "Thanks, dude." Scott stuffs the charger into his backpack. "I've been borrowing Deaton's, but he gets annoyed. Let me get you coffee?"

"Hot chocolate," Stiles says. "Lots of whip."

"On it," Scott says, saluting him.

Stiles checks his email while Scott waits in line. There's nothing that needs an urgent response, although he flags a message from Danny to look at later. One of Lydia's cousins has sent him a Facebook friend request, ThinkGeek is having a sale, and his dad still doesn't understand how to delete columns in Excel. Stiles sighs, reading that one: he's a lot of things, but a miracle worker is not among them.

Scott comes back with two cups, pushing one across the table. "So," he says to Stiles. "Spill. I'm ready to hear it."

"From the horse's mouth, huh?" Stiles takes a sip of his hot chocolate. It's too hot, even with the whipped cream. "What do you want to know? Allison looked beautiful, Lydia looked beautiful, Lydia's mom cried a lot, I think I saw Chris's lip wobble, which was pretty impressive."

Scott nods, shoulders hunched, face stoic. "Allison's happy?"

"They're both happy." Stiles bumps his foot against Scott's. "You know that."

"Yeah," Scott says reluctantly. He's dated other people over the years, had a few serious girlfriends, but he's never really gotten over Allison. "I know. It's just—Allison, you know?"

"You should follow my example," Stiles says. "Cats. It's never too early to prepare for spinsterhood and animal hoarding."

Scott makes a grossed-out face. "You are _not_ a spinster." He rubs at his temples. "Even your cats smell like—"

"Wait, were you trying to scent mark my cats?" This is exactly what Stiles was afraid of when he asked Scott to catsit. "That's creepy, dude. My apartment is not your territory. Actually, I would go so far as to say that it is Martha's territory. Ten just hides under the couch most of the time."

"I'm just saying," Scott says, "they smell."

Stiles kicks Scott under the table. After a moment, Scott kicks back. It's just like old times.

—

Derek is waiting on the steps to Stiles's apartment building the next night, paging through a dog-eared copy of _Breakfast of Champions_ and looking—nervous. Nervous on Derek is a frown, disapproving eyebrows, arms crossed over his chest, holding himself in. Stiles touches Derek on the shoulder and says, "Come on."

Inside his apartment, Stiles puts away the bag of groceries he grabbed at Trader Joe's—frozen stuff, mostly, Stiles has realistically assessed his ability and desire to cook for one—and waters the house plants. Derek doesn't exactly hover, but he sits at the pass-through between the kitchen and the living/dining room and watches Stiles without offering to help. "Not up for putting your big werewolf muscles to use unpacking dumplings?"

"I can see it's a big challenge for you," Derek says, shifting on the barstool.

Stiles made it clear when he moved out of his dad's house a decade ago that his dorm room and subsequent apartments were off limits to supernatural beings without explicit invitation, and he backed that up with wards and mountain ash. He didn't expect Derek to feel so uncomfortable inside now, but years of rigidly enforced boundaries can have that effect on a person. Every time Derek comes over, he eyes the knick-knacks on the bookcase suspiciously, as if they might break with a sneeze, and he won't help himself from the refrigerator like a normal person. 

At least the cats like him.

"How was werewolf UN?" Stiles says.

"It's not werewolf UN," Derek says, just like the last twenty times Stiles called it _werewolf UN_. "Things went—it was okay. Good. One of the kids from the Flores pack in Arizona is looking at coming up here for college, his alpha talked to me about it. His grandmother."

Stiles closes the door to the fridge and shoves the empty cloth grocery sack into the bottom of the pantry. "Hmm." Derek's one of the youngest alphas, of the packs established enough to have representation at werewolf UN; he doesn't usually talk about it. "What school?"

"Saint Aloysius." That's the little Jesuit college half an hour south of Beacon Hills. "She's not asking for us to take him on while he's here, but…"

"You've got time to think about it," Stiles says, rounding the wall that divides the living spaces and the kitchen. Derek turns to face him, still scowly, and something twists in Stiles's gut. 

"What?" Derek says, and Stiles comes over to him, then, puts one hand on Derek's thigh and slips the other just below the hem of his shirt, against Derek's hot skin.

It's taken all these years, but Stiles is finally learning how to speak to Derek, to hold back instead of push, to comfort before demanding. "Is this okay?" he says.

" _Yes_ ," Derek says. Like it's some wondrous thing.

—

Kissing Derek is still new—they haven't been doing this very long—and it's easy for Stiles to get lost, just touching Derek, running a palm down Derek's side, trailing fingers over the soft flesh of Derek's inner arm, mouthing the spot right beneath Derek's ear that makes his breath go sharp and stutter. Stiles is worse than Scott with the cats. He might not be a werewolf, but Stiles is still a territorial creature. He gets his claws into people and never lets go.

Under Stiles's hands, Derek is eager, hungry, giving as good as he gets, forgetting to be shy. He rakes his nails down Stiles's back, clutches him tight, holds Stiles like he couldn't that time he was drowning. Sometimes Stiles wakes up in the middle of the night and cries because he can't believe he's still alive, that they're all still here. Derek's never spent the night here, but he could. Stiles would let him.

"I missed you," Stiles says, after a few minutes of that.

Derek leans in, rests his head on Stiles's shoulder, nosing the curve of Stiles's neck. "Did you have fun?"

"I did," Stiles says. He held Lydia's train, danced with Allison, helped Claire catch one of the bouquets. There are white rose petals pressed between the pages of the Mark Twain biography he brought for the plane and never read. The back of his neck got a little sunburned. "Still missed you."

"Okay," Derek says. He's starting to smile, slow, just a hint at the corners of his naturally downturned mouth. Stiles can't look away. 

That's a good start.

—

> throw roses into the abyss and say: "here is my thanks to the monster who didn't succeed in swallowing me alive."  
>  \- nietzsche

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [ladyofthelog](http://ladyofthelog.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


End file.
